Indian digital payments major, Paytm, which is owned by One97 Communications, on Monday said that its payment gateway processes 400 million transactions every month for its merchant partners. Along with this, the company also announced the launch of a recurring payment feature for merchants, using Paytm’s payment gateway.

Through this, the company said it aims to equip subscription-based businesses to effortlessly collect payments from its users. In addition, consumers have the option of choosing their preferred mode of payment from the likes of credit cards, debit cards, netbanking, Paytm proprietary instruments, and saved cards on Paytm.

Image source: Paytm Blog

Speaking of the development, Kiran Vasireddy, COO, Paytm, said,

“At Paytm, we continue to invest in innovative technologies to cater to the evolving payment needs of our merchant partners. Frictionless recurring payments is a critical element of subscription businesses, and with this feature on our payment gateway, merchants can now reach out to millions of users for their subscription offerings. We expect this new feature to benefit both merchants and customers alike.”

The automatic billing feature, which is based on the frequency of a user’s subscription, is expected to simplify payments for several growing use cases including bill payments, content subscription, grocery purchases, membership fees, and housing society payments, among others.

According to the company, the payment gateway’s instant plug-and-play offerings and deep merchant platform integrations has helped it rapidly expand its merchant base. At present, the company said it is focused towards driving an intuitive payment experience and easy integration for third-party platforms.

Paytm’s payment gateway, which also allows merchants to receive payments through different channels including email, SMS, and chat, claims that several large online businesses such as IRCTC, Zomato, OYO Rooms, Grofers, Swiggy, BigBasket, and Idea leverage its payment gateway.

The Noida-based company isn’t the only consumer payments brand that operates a payment gateway. It’s arch rival, Gurgaon-based MobiKwik, also owns its proprietary gateway, which counts brands including Uber and Dominos Pizza as clients.

In a recent interview with YourStory, Upasana Taku, Co-founder of MobiKwik, said the company was breaking even for its payment gateway business. However, the gateway wasn’t profitable for the company for certain types of offline transactions, including smaller stores where the return of investment is less.

While announcing its new head for the payment gateway business in December last year, MobiKwik also claimed that it envisages a 400 percent growth for its gateway business in the next one year. In addition to this, the founders said the gateway business is on track to process more than $20 billion in online payments over the next two years.